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Thread: eLearning and slide presentations
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From: Christyna Copeland Bobrick
Date: Fri, Jun 10 2022 1:08PM
Subject: eLearning and slide presentations
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I have two questions related to testing eLearning modules. These are not websites but self-contained interactive files that are usually accessed through a learning management system. My accessibility concerns are not related to the LMS but the accessibility of the learning module itself.
These modules are built as a series of slides, almost always with narration on each slide and frequently with interactive elements.
My first question is about a module without interactivity. It is a series of slides that have a title at the top of each slide, some image content on the page, and a narration track. Usually there are back/next buttons to navigate through the slides. However, now we have a request to set the slides to run one right after another with no back/next controls. Does this violate an accessibility standard, and if so which one? There's an argument that since a screen reader will announce the new page title, that is sufficient to alert an AT user that there has been a change.
On a related topic, it is standard for the narration to begin as soon as the user clicks to the next slide. Since there is a pause/play button at the beginning of the multimedia controls, it seems to pass the letter of 1.4.2 if certainly not the spirit of it or even the W3C recommendation that the audio should only be triggered by the user after the page loads. Does anyone have experience with this. I am curious to find out how other developers handle this but have had little luck online.
Thanks
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From: Mark Magennis
Date: Mon, Jun 13 2022 3:35AM
Subject: Re: eLearning and slide presentations
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That's an interesting example Christyna. My first thought was that it may fail WCAG Success Criterion 2.2.1
Timing Adjustable which requires that if there is a time limit (e.g. the limited time available for the user to digest the slide content before it automatically moves to the next slide) then the user must be able to turn off, adjust, or extend that time limit. But you mentioned a pause/play button. If this can be used at any time then it may provide that ability and the content may pass this success criterion.
Another way of looking at this is to say that by removing the user control, the slide sequence has effectively been turned into a video. WCAG defines video as a moving or sequenced pictures or images that can be made up of animated or photographic images, or both. With the addition of the narration, this becomes synchronized media. There are a number of WCAG requirements for synchronized media (1.2.2 to 1.2.8) which basically boil down to requiring captions and audio description to pass WCAG A and AA. The narration may meet the requirements for audio description if it describes the information in the image content (such that you wouldn't need to see the images to get all the information). The narration would also need to be presented in captions unless it is just reading content that is displayed as text in the images.
Having said that, I'm not too sure about whether this can actually be treated as a "video" because it sounds like a series of web pages where the user can also browse through the content (the images will need text alternatives) and there is a page load or other mechanism that causes screen readers to read the page title (and possibly also announce other things like the number of headings and links). If this is the case, then is there a danger that the screen reader's announcements will occur at the same time as the narration? This would probably make both unintelligible, so that may be a consideration.
Just some thoughts there, no real answers but I hope it helps some.
Mark